Disaster induced displacement
Making sense of climate change, natural disasters and displacement: a work in progress
Climate change and displacement
Authors:
E. Ferris
Publisher:
Brookings Institution, 2007
This report discusses some of the problems with the current debate on climate change’s impact on displacement. In doing so, it reviews what is known about climate change and considers alternative ways that climate change relates to environmental factors, which in turn influence displacement.
The authors stress that this is a work in progress and strongly implies that we don’t know all the answers yet. They argue that it seems fairly certain that climate change has the potential to displace more people by increasing the frequency and severity of natural disasters, particularly hydrometeorological events. However, It is unknown how many people are likely to be displaced by these events, but their number will likely rise.
On the other hand, what is known is that :
- human induced climate change is real; the scientific evidence is clear
- climate change will displace people by increasing sudden-onset natural disasters
- further work is needed to explore the relationship between poverty, climate change, and displacement
- the relationship between environment changes and conflict and government decisions to implement development projects needs more research
- arguments which may be useful in mobilising a political response to prevent climate change are un helpful in building bridges between the valuable work on climate change with the equally valuable work on disaster risk reduction.
